What is the educational value of intercollegiate sports?
University of Texas faculty were understandably outraged when the news broke that football coach Mack Brown’s annual salary would be $5 million, making him the highest-paid college coach in the nation. This is a familiar dispute. Academics bemoan the university’s support of unpaid professional athletics, which of course has no connection to the business of teaching and research. (I suppose to get my commitments on the table I’ll stipulate upfront that teaching and research, broadly speaking, are the business of the university.) The retort is that unpaid professional sports at major-conference powers like Texas regularly earn millions of dollars in profit. That money is generally used to fund other non-revenue generating sports (everything except football, men’s basketball, and I understand occasionally baseball).
Although I’m loath to support college athletics philosophically, I’ll concede that it would be difficult for a university to simply give up this revenue. The relevant question to me is why the money is being funneled back into varsity sports. Why shouldn’t this revenue be remitted back to the university for fulfillment of the core mission? The answer is that doing so would make non-revenue varsity sports impossible. But so what? What is it about getting on a bus and competing against another university that’s so positive an experience for student-athletes? Athletics are important and can surely be part of a rounded education, but I tend to believe that intramural competition provides all of the physical and spiritual fulfillment of intercollegiate sports.
I fear that intercollegiate sports continue out of inertia. At the high school level, it would make sense that the benefits of athletic competition might only be available by competing against other schools; for example, a school of 400 students would not be able to form several soccer teams. Additionally, the price of high school competition is generally quite low as significant costs are born by parents and competition is generally geographically closer than in intercollegiate matches. But at a major university, intercollegiate sports appear, at least to me, highly competitive and very satisfying.
It would be hard to make the case that for student-athletes, the amazing commitment of time and attention paid to sports does not trade off with study or academic activities. It would also be hard to make the case that minor sports provide value for the student body at large, which is likely to be entirely unaware of field hockey and diving.
is there a better defense for intercollegiate sports?
-John
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